From Honey to Sustainable Headiness

When Dr.Yoginee Budhkar and Dr. Ashwini Deore realised that their common passion was bees and honey, this led to an idea about entering the alcoholic beverages industry with a new mead product. However, the route taken by them for creating Cerana Meads is certainly not an easy one since the Founders will have to be persistent in their efforts to make mead popular, especially among the young generation in India.

Mead, a new entrant in India’s alco beverages industry, is made from honey in the midst of a lot of home-grown brands of gin, rum, craft beers, fruit wines and RTDs. Though honey is an exceptionally versatile ingredient, it is relatively unexplored in India, primarily limited to traditional medicinal applications. Thus, integrating it into the alcoholic beverage sector was an innovative and encouraging endeavour. The wheels began to turn fast for mead in India when Yoginee prepared a mead concoction. It resulted in the setting up of an enterprise called Cerana Meads, which made its commercial debut at the end of 2019. For a start-up in the alcoholic beverages industry to focus on something as unique as mead, there would have had to be strong motivation, which, in the case of the Founders, was their love for innovation and environment. “Offering the new generation something that is exciting and enriching acted as the main motivation for Cerana Meads,” explains Yoginee.

Overcoming Impediment

However, getting into uncharted waters was a tough task. When they applied for the excise license, there was no law in Maharashtra that allowed honey to be fermented. It took them follow-ups of close to a year to get a meeting with the decision-makers in the Maharashtra’s Excise Department. The Founders were finally able to convey the importance of mead as an industry. “For a start-up with limited human and financial resources, to have to engage with this volume of compliances is difficult and seriously hampers the growth of the business,” Yoginee laments.

Their paramount hurdle has persistently been to establish mead as a distinct category. Given that the Indian market is more price-sensitive than quality-sensitive, there are only small pockets where consumers will shell out more for quality. As a craft mead brand, Cerana Meads is a niche player in the current Indian alco-beverages industry. The drinking community in India is currently acquainting itself with meads.

Given the existing scenario, the process of category-building for mead will be lengthy and challenging in India’s alcobev market, which is still predominantly a spirits market. For new categories like mead, cider, fruit wines to become popular, efforts need to be made across the spectrum ranging from ease of doing business, to business-friendly regulations, effective distribution and online retail in terms of availability of these products to target consumers who still depend on large liquor shops which showcase spirits more enthusiastically as they are most probaly the fast- moving items on their shelves.

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